Are you ready to learn, adapt & transform for the new work reality?

COVID-19 has created a seismic shift in the way we work. Engagement has been shaken up while the employee experience continues to somersault.

Some organizations have collapsed while others have expanded rapidly to meet unanticipated needs.

We have shifted where we work, how we work, and our views of the future of work.

Hoards of us are working from home, multitudes are furloughed or laid off, while others are working long hours, risking their lives, and sometimes receiving danger pay as a gesture of support.

The boundaries between work and the rest of life are eroding as parents and children wrestle for Wi-Fi bandwidth to complete work and school while sitting at the kitchen table.

How will we and our companies restructure our relationship with work going forward as the ground rumbles underneath our feet?

1. Learn

Learning requires reflection and anticipation. What have you learned about work and what will you and others in your organization need to learn to sustain your organization and enliven your work experience? A great Canadian thinker, Marshall McLuhan, said in the future we will learn a living more than earn a living. That future is now.

2. Adapt

When things were business as usual we could adapt to work by assimilating new experiences into our existing understanding of work. But COVID-19 has created massive disequilibrium asking us to create new internal and external structures to adapt to change. In what specific ways have you mentally and socially adapted to the changing landscape of work?

3. Transform

Although we must be cautious in declaring silver linings or touting anemic positive thinking it is a marvel to see how individuals and organizations can transform. Many of us have been wounded by work yet as the poet and writer Robert Bly stated, “our wounds transformed can become our gifts to our community.”

When you look at the journey of moving through COVID-19 are you enduring, managing, mastering, or transforming your experience and your organization?

I believe even engagement needs to transform from employee engagement to work engagement. This signals a shift from focusing on completing surveys and liking the organization or feeling good about where we work to performing good work in a sustainable way, every day. Engagement must become relevant, meaningful, and authentic.

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James Lawson-Miln, Poppulo's head of internal communication, and I will offer a framework for responding to our challenges in a webinar on June 11th at 11 am EDT/4 pm GMT. Attend the webinar and stay for further conversation after the hour as we equip ourselves and our organizations to make the second half of 2020 a time of robust rebuilding.